If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

Re: Ving

Originally Posted by doraemonz

Thank you very much!

I appreciate your thanks, but the moderators here prefer that you just click the like button rather than post a separate message for that. It makes it appear that there has been another comment in the thread.

Re: Ving

In the first, there is a misplaced modifier that suggests that her toenails were chatting. The second is just wrong.

She's clipping her toenails while chatting on her cell phone.

I disagree, and would say sentence (A) is perfectly correct. Contextually, toenails don't make phone calls, but even if they did, there is only one subject in the sentence, "She," and the complement "toenails" is introduced as an object to its verb.

Consider:

"Riding my bicycle through the countryside last Sunday, a cow knocked me over."

Now there is a sentence like the one you were imagining, with an unclear subject-object relationship (cows can't ride bicycles, and what was that cow doing riding my bike through the countryside?)

Re: Ving

Originally Posted by konungursvia

I disagree, and would say sentence (A) is perfectly correct. Contextually, toenails don't make phone calls, but even if they did, there is only one subject in the sentence, "She," and the complement "toenails" is introduced as an object to its verb.

Consider:

"Riding my bicycle through the countryside last Sunday, a cow knocked me over."

Now there is a sentence like the one you were imagining, with an unclear subject-object relationship (cows can't ride bicycles, and what was that cow doing riding my bike through the countryside?)

Yes, context can clear up the discrepancies. But the position of a participial phrase in a sentence is grammatically important. We know that toenails don't use phones and we also know that cows don't ride bicycles. But placing a participial phrase in the wrong position is considered incorrect by many.